In sunny California, it is impossible to listen to talk radio very long without hearing an ad for a solar panel installation company that promises to lower your cost of electricity.  You agree to lease the panels, and the company will install them on your roof, and your lease payments will be less than your current electricity bill.  Generous subsidies from the state of California make the deal look like a win-win.

Not so fast, according to the National Real Estate Post, a site aimed at real estate agents.

The following video cautions agents that the lease obligations, usually twenty years, make selling the house much more difficult.  The new buyer has to be qualified by the lessor to take over the lease.  Or the new buyer may not wish to continue using the panels, which are certain to become technologically outdated as time goes on, if they even still work.  

And, buying that new home may be a problem for the seller: the solar panel lease obligations get factored into the homeowner’s credit rating as a financial obligation, meaning it will be more difficult to qualify for a mortgage on the new house, as well as more difficult to sell the old house.

Watch this before you decide to go solar on a lease:

Hat tip: iOTW Report